This invention relates to improvements in and concerning a printer for use in an electronic balance, for example.
The electronic balance is a device for weighing a given object such as an article of commerce. The latest version of the electronic balance is internally provided with a printer such that when the object is weighed, the printer will issue a label on which the weight of the object and the name of the object as a commodity are printed. This label is fit for application to the wrap enclosing the object. The printed label thus issued by the printer comes from a rolled strip of carrier paper which has a multiplicity of blank labels stuck to the carrier paper through the medium of a silicone resin coating deposited on the carrier paper in advance. The roll holding the supply of blank labels between its successive plies is set in place inside the printer and the leading end of the carrier paper is paid off the roll and inserted in the slit between the printing head and the printing pad. The print on the label is produced between the printing head and the printing pad. The printed label is moved out of this slit and thrust out of the enclosure of the printer, to be removed from the carrier paper and applied to the weighed object. The carrier paper stripped of the label is taken up inside the printer. The advance of the series of blank labels is effected by the motion produced when the carrier paper is thus taken up.
On the part of the electronic balance, there are times when a receipt indicating the sum payable for the weighed object is required to be issued to a client separately of the label mentioned above. The printer of this class is designed so as to hold therein a rolled strip of plain paper called a journal sheet and, in case of need, to cause this journal sheet to be drawn out of the roll and forward to a printing mechanism by a feeding mechanism disposed near the printing mechanism, printed by the printing mechanism, and then discharged from the enclosure of the printer.
The electronic balance, depending on the use for which it is intended, may be required to combine the function of label printing and that of journal sheet printing in one. Since the label printer and the journal sheet printer have dissimilar configurations, the conventional electronic balance requiring a combination of the two functions incorporates both a label printer and a journal sheet printer. Consequently, this electronic balance suffers from a disadvantage that the joint accommodation of these printers adds notably to the structural complexity and the dimensional bulkiness of the electronic balance and, at the same time, to the price of the electronic balance.